One and Wonder (5 page)

His eyes appealed to Cameron.

“I don't understand it.” The spectre of dread haunted his voice. “They weren't killed—there would be more skeletons. They weren't even frightened—they didn't barricade their doors, or fire a gun, or even upset the furniture. They just set things in order, took a few useful items—and went away.”

His voice fell to a whisper of dull wonderment.

“But why—and where—could they have gone?”

We moved the life-craft again, this time into what had been an exclusive shopping district, where once, I fancied, the great men of the Directorate must have bought jewels and furs and perfumes for their mistresses, their secretaries, and perhaps even for their wives.

The street doors of these glittering shops were generally unlocked, or left wide open. Many shelves were bare, as if the goods had been simply carried out, but there was little evidence of vandalism or violent looting. Unbroken windows still held garish displays of tarnished costume jewelry. Abandoned cash registers were still stuffed with currency and coin—from which I saw Lord's gunmen furtively filling their pockets.

We landed next in the middle of the city, in the wide empty canyon of Tyler Avenue. There the massive granite walls were hushed and dead, but green weeds were pushing from every crevice in the hot pavements. A few sparrows were quarreling noisily about a window ledge.

“This was Squaredeal Square.” Doyle's voice seemed too loud, in that sun-beaten silence. “If there was any fighting—war or rebellion—we ought to find the traces here.”

Peering up at those splendid dead facades, I remembered that I had been here once before—in a great jamboree of the Tyler Scouts, when I was seven. There was Squaredeal Hall. There was the purple granite balcony where Tyler—or perhaps it was one of his public doubles—had appeared as we marched by, waving his arm mechanically as we screamed out the Tyler Song.

A diamondback, lazily sunning on the black granite steps of Squaredeal Hall, greeted us with a warning whir. Lord whipped out his automatic with a nervous expertness and shot it through the head.

The crash of his shot shattered that hot silence. It thundered back, appallingly magnified by those sheer granite cliffs. The dwarfish Squaredealer and his guards crowded apprehensively together, and we all listened uneasily. But the echoes faded unanswered; the dead city was not aroused. Doyle led us up the steps, past the dead diamondback. Voiceless with awe, we went
on between the immense square columns beyond. Here was the shrine of the Directorate. Tyler had surrounded his birthplace with a colonnade of purple granite, more majestic than Karnak.

Memory stirred again. After that review and jamboree, as a personal gift from Tyler, each Scout had received a picture post card of the shrine. The little weather-beaten farmhouse was shown beneath the towering columns, surrounded with an old-fashioned garden of zinnias and gladioli. The stone spring-house had been restored. The old apple tree, which the Director used to climb, was pink with blooms in the picture.

But that historic tree was dead, now. The house had fallen in. The mighty purple columns rose out of a green sea of weeds and sprouts and brambles. Wild morning-glories had buried the old spring-house. Something moved in the brush, and we heard the vicious warning hum of another diamondback.

Beside the useless elevator, we climbed a narrow stair. Tyler’s own door, between two empty guard-boxes, had been left unlocked. We walked into the abandoned splendor of the Director's own apartment—and found no trace of violence.

On the high wall behind his desk, and the office chair that had served him for a throne, a faded tapestry still hung, intact and undefiled, embroidered in gold with the three linked squares of the Machine.

The massive door of a huge fireproof safe swung carelessly open. Its compartments were stuffed with documents marked RESTRICTED or CONFIDENTIAL or TOP SECRET. Letters, reports, beribboned executive decrees—the state papers of the Directorate, left heedlessly behind.

Lord, with a shrill excited shout, discovered a pile of heavy cloth bags that had been buried under the dusty documents, in the bottom of the safe. Feverishly, he ripped one of them open, spilling out bright golden double-eagles.

“Millions—left behind!” Wide awake, for once, his eyes glittered yellow as the metal, and his thin nasal voice was hushed with awe. “There must have been a dreadful panic, to make them leave the gold.”

But Cameron pointed quietly to several empty compartments, and a blackened metal wastebasket, on the end of the desk, nearly full of gray ashes.

“It wasn't panic, Mr. Lord,” he said respectfully. “Tyler had plenty of time to burn the papers he wanted to destroy. Then, I should imagine, he just walked out.”

The little Squaredealer peered up at him, bewildered and visibly afraid.

“But why? Tyler wouldn't give up the whole Directorate.”

The faded luxury of the great rooms gave us no answer.

The paneled walls showed no marks of bullets. The dusty rugs showed no stains that could be blood. The Directors great bed, under its coverlet of dust, still was neatly made.

Doyle came back to Cameron, muttering the question that haunted us:

“Where could they have gone?”

Cameron rubbed his lean jaw with a brown forefinger.

“Let's try the country,” he said thoughtfully.

Doyle stared at him, blankly. “Why?”

“People used to live in cities for certain reasons,” Cameron said. “Just as they worked for great corporations, or enlisted in the Atomic Service, or joined the Squaredeal Machine. Perhaps those reasons changed.”

Lord blinked sleepily.

“You had better watch your tongue,” he warned sharply. “I believe you read too much in Mr. Hudd's library. I'll be compelled to report your dangerous views.”

But we returned to the life-craft. Doyle landed it again, outside Americania, where a disused highway made a narrow slash through woods and thickets. We climbed down between the stabilizers once more, and Cameron pointed suddenly.

Planted in the middle of the old road behind us was a signpost. It carried a yellow-lettered warning:

DANGER!

Metropolitan Areas

V

Gathered in a puzzled little circle, we examined that sign.

“Well?” Doyle looked at Cameron.

“A remarkably strong aluminum alloy.” Thoughtfully, Cameron rubbed his lean brown chin. “An excellent vitreous enamel. Evidently it was made and set up after the city was abandoned—to keep people out.”

He started whistling gaily through his teeth, but Lord scowled him into silence. His blue eyes had lit with a speculative eagerness.

“And so?” prompted Doyle.

“Interesting implications.” Cameron counted on lean brown fingers. “One, there are people. Two, they possess a high grade metal-and-enamel technology. Three, they have sufficient social organization to post public signs. Four, they don't like cities.”

His eager eyes peered beyond the silver pencil of the life-craft, down the dark leafy tunnel of the old road. He softly whistled another lilting bar, and then looked quickly back at Doyle.

“Let’s take off again, Captain,” he suggested. “And follow the road, flying low. I think we'll find the sign-posters.”

“We'll do that—” Doyle began, but the little Squaredealer interrupted him sharply:

“I'm in charge, and I don't agree.” Lord's nasal tone was both insolent and apprehensive. “The jets are too bright and noisy. We'd be seen—maybe killed from ambush. Don't forget that melted money. No, we'll leave the craft hidden here, and go on foot.”

Doyle's red head nodded soberly.

“A wise precaution, probably,” he agreed. “We'll carry a radiophone, so we can call back.”

Leaving the bright craft hidden among the trees, we started cautiously down the green tunnel. Interlacing branches usually hid the sky. Vines and ferns made thick walls on either side. Jays scolded at us, and unseen things rustled in the brush. Once we came upon a red deer. It stood quite motionless in a little glade ahead, antlers high, until Lord clutched for his automatic; then it bounded noisily away.

We were all, I think, keyed up and uneasy. The gloom of the forest darkened my own thoughts. Imagination turned small rustlings into startling threats. Recalling that the two other landing parties were long overdue, I began to wish I had a gun.

Cameron walked ahead. His step was light and springy, and his hollowed face had a look of grave expectancy. Once he started whistling again, softly, but Lord stopped him with a snarled command.

We must have gone three miles, before Cameron turned from a curve in the old road and plunged out of sight in the ferns and tangled vines. We followed him. A few yards brought us into daylight, on the rocky rim of a low sandstone cliff.

“The sign-posters,” he said softly.

He pointed. Before us spread a broad, shallow valley of woods and open meadow. The sun glittered from the curve of a stream, but I saw no people.

“There's the house against the other cliff Reddish walls, and green roof.” I found it, then—a low graceful building that had seemed part of the landscape. “I heard a man singing.”

I listened. It was midafternoon now, and a soft breeze had begun to disturb the midday hush. Leaves stirred lazily. I heard the sleepy hum of insects, the cool murmur of water running, a mockingbird singing—all wonderful sounds, half-familiar, that brought my boyhood back.

“Listen,” Cameron urged.

There was a clear yodeling call—answered by a woman's voice.

“Keep down!” Lord's nasal voice was cautiously hushed. “We'll slip
across, under cover. Study their weapons, and keep out of sight. If we're discovered—shoot first.”

“Are you sure,” Cameron protested, “that shooting’s necessary?”

“I'm running this show.” Lord's sleepy eyes narrowed unpleasantly. “I'll tolerate no meddling from you.”

A fem-grown ravine let us down from the low cliff. We waded the clear stream and climbed again through the woods beyond. Nearer the dwelling, the land had been cleared. We crossed an orchard of young apple trees, slinking toward the voices of the man and the woman.

Twenty years at space had not made us expert stalkers. Dry leaves rattled, twigs cracked, and pebbles clattered. Lord turned, more than once, with a hissed injunction of silence. But at last we came on hands and knees to the grassy rim of another ravine, and peered down upon the unsuspecting two.

They were running a machine. The young woman sat in a little cab of bright aluminum, moving levers. A toothed bucket, on a long metal arm, scooped earth and stones from the side of the gorge to fill a hopper.

The man held a flexible hose, pouring a heavy yellow semi-liquid from the machine into a metal form across the little gorge. Presently he stopped to lift and adjust the plates of the form, and then poured again. Between the plates, I saw, a massive yellow dam was growing.

The machine ran quietly. There was only a subdued humming, and the occasional clatter of the bucket when sometimes it scraped a stone. It ate the dark soil, pouring out yellow concrete.

I peered at Cameron, astonished. He made a pleased little nod.

“A very neat step forward,” he whispered, “in basic technology.”

“Silence!” Lord hissed.

Below us, the man called to the girl, and she moved the machine on its wide caterpillar tracks. Watching them, I felt an increasing glow of pleasure. For twenty years I had thought and dreamed of life on earth; here at last was a glimpse of it—as any lucky man might hope to live it. The man was a lithe young giant in shorts, bareheaded and brown. The sweat of his toil, in the hot afternoon, made a film that rippled and gleamed with every movement of his sun-bronzed body. Sometimes he paused to get his breath, smiling and calling down to the girl.

“Mushrooms for supper, what?”

“Let's plant a Mac on the south terrace, shall we?”

“I've thought of a name, darling—let's call him Dane Barstow. Dane Barstow Hawkins!”

That name gave me a puzzled shock. Dane Barstow had been my own father's name—but it seemed quite improbable that the expected young Hawkins should be named for an unsuccessful traitor, long dead in the
labor camps of the Squaredeal Machine.

But I soon forgot my wonder, watching them. Their absorbed happiness set me to dreaming wistfully. The girl was sun-colored, too, still slender, lovely. She ran the machine with a graceful skill, until the time when the man lost his balance as he hauled at the hose and teetered on the edge of the dam.

She stopped the machine then, with a sharp cry of alarm. After a moment of frantic clawing at the air, however, the man regained his balance. Seeing him safe, she laughed at him—a rich laugh, deep and musical and glad.

“Darling, if you had seen yourself! But please be careful—you're much too valuable to be made into the dam! If you're so weak, we'd better stop—I'm hungry anyhow.”

“Laugh at me, huh?”

Grinning fondly through a mock ferocity, the man hung up the hose and dropped down from the dam. The girl scrambled out of the cab and ran from him, still laughing.

“Darling,” she sobbed, “you looked so silly—”

“Stop ‘em!” whispered Lord.

Instantly, the automatics crashed. The girl crumpled down beside the bright machine. The man ran another step, uttered a strangled cry, fell sprawling on top of her.

“My God!” Doyle shouted incredulous protest. “What have you done?”

The dwarfish Squaredealer fired twice more, expertly. His bullets thudded into the quivering bodies. The bitter reek of smoke stung my nostrils. Nodding to his bleak-faced gunmen, he rose calmly to his feet.

“Well, they didn't get away,” His nasal voice had a shocking complacency. “I thought they might have seen us. Now we'll have to work fast, to learn what we can and get away to space. Doyle, call the craft—have it brought here at once. Cameron, inspect that machine—Mr. Hudd will want a full report on it. We'll look for their weapons.”

Doyle had the self-discipline of a good officer. He was white-lipped, stunned, but any protest must wait for the proper channels. He reached obediently for the little radiophone which I had been carrying.